Promotions — Do Tie Your Giveaway With Your Brand Messaging
Everyone loves the tech giveaways, but they are more likely to draw everyone to your booth. This brings a potential for not reaching your target audience. There are too many Apple Watch and iPad giveaways and they are not always relevant to the brand. Instead, create a giveaway that does tie into your branding. For example, Skyline gave away donations to one of three charities the year we launched our “Helping the World Trade” core purpose at EXHIBITOR. While this was not related to trade shows, it did tie into our release of our core purpose of “Helping the World Trade” which in part is about sharing and caring.
Promotions — Don't Giveaway Low Quality Trinkets
If you can only afford something that will break the second time your client uses it, save the money and buy coffee for your staff on the day of the show instead. Another option may be to give your clients coupons for a discount on their next purchase and only give an inexpensive, but durable, giveaway to other clients such as a pen or branded post it notes. You may not get points for originality, but it is better than being remembered as the company that had the water bottle that leaked.
Promotions — Don't Bring a Speaker that Does Not Align Their Presentation Back to your Product or Service Benefits or The Theme for Your Display Design
Instead, consider having a knowledgeable speaker in your industry or someone who can help improve your customer’s productivity at work. It is great to have someone who can draw a crowd, but they should also be able to draw the right crowd and give them a message that is relevant to your brand. Consider an educational speaker or someone higher up in your company that can speak to your product in an entertaining way.
Pay attention to your audience. Look around, meet your fellow attendees and you might discover people with the most interesting stories to share. If they are not good public speakers, you can help them by coaching them, adding them to a panel with a good moderator or proposing shorter sessions (a short amateurish-but-interesting presentation of a great idea/project/etc is more bearable than a long one). It’s all about how relevant that presentation it to your audience.
It is also a good idea to host a networking meeting for top clients and promote it via a special invitation just for them. For larger exhibitors create spaces inside your space to host such event, or, reserve a room at a nearby restaurant after the show and spring for appetizers and their first beverage.
Promotions — Do Have a Social Media Hashtag for Show Communications and Have Few of Them with Different Emotional Call to Action
#notleveragingyourbrand. Make sure you include the hashtag for the trade show or event you are participating in and others for your company or relevant industry publications. If you have a tagline for your theme, make sure to include that consistently in all your communications as well. For example, if you are at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, you would use #CES #CES2018 @nameofyourcompany #Yourtradeshow/eventtheme.
Create a hashtag designed to spark conversation.
Get adventurous.
Create a hashtag designed to spark conversation. You might want to create a dedicated product realted hashtag that interested parties can use to contact you with questions, comments and concerns. this is very helpful if you are using the trade show venue to show off your new product. Start this atleast 6 months before the show so that it generates lot of brand buzz around the product. McDonald’s recently used product related hashtag to promote one of its specific menu items, Buttermilk Crispy Tenders. The brand used the hashtag #ButtermilkCrispyTenders, which is more specific than a simple hashtag like #McDonalds or #ChickenTenders. This hashtag effectively showcases McDonald’s Buttermilk Crispy Tenders and makes it easy for users to find more images of the product.
Boost audience engagement, consider using hashtags to run social media contests and giveaways. Contests and giveaways are a great way to incentivize social media users to reuse branded hashtags. Many brands that leverage this strategy see an influx of valuable user-generated content.
To promote its coffee and donuts during the winter holiday season Dunkin' Donuts ran a photo contest on its Instagram that encouraged user participation. The company instructed users to post a photo or video of a holiday moment with Dunkin' Donuts alongside the captions #DDCoffeeJoy and #Contest. Multiple prizes were awarded to top posts, including Dunkin' Donuts gift cards and JetBlue travel certificates. Additionally, more than 300 original posts were created using the unifying hashtag #DDCoffeeJoy.
This use of hashtags emboldens the “social” in social media, and allows your brand to connect one-on-one with highly engaged fans or the curious onlookers who are wanting to become engaged. It is an effective tool to build brand awareness — touch lives and solve problems.
Create a hashtag designed to spark conversation.
Get adventurous.
Create a hashtag designed to spark conversation. You might want to create a dedicated product realted hashtag that interested parties can use to contact you with questions, comments and concerns. this is very helpful if you are using the trade show venue to show off your new product. Start this atleast 6 months before the show so that it generates lot of brand buzz around the product. McDonald’s recently used product related hashtag to promote one of its specific menu items, Buttermilk Crispy Tenders. The brand used the hashtag #ButtermilkCrispyTenders, which is more specific than a simple hashtag like #McDonalds or #ChickenTenders. This hashtag effectively showcases McDonald’s Buttermilk Crispy Tenders and makes it easy for users to find more images of the product.
Boost audience engagement, consider using hashtags to run social media contests and giveaways. Contests and giveaways are a great way to incentivize social media users to reuse branded hashtags. Many brands that leverage this strategy see an influx of valuable user-generated content.
To promote its coffee and donuts during the winter holiday season Dunkin' Donuts ran a photo contest on its Instagram that encouraged user participation. The company instructed users to post a photo or video of a holiday moment with Dunkin' Donuts alongside the captions #DDCoffeeJoy and #Contest. Multiple prizes were awarded to top posts, including Dunkin' Donuts gift cards and JetBlue travel certificates. Additionally, more than 300 original posts were created using the unifying hashtag #DDCoffeeJoy.
This use of hashtags emboldens the “social” in social media, and allows your brand to connect one-on-one with highly engaged fans or the curious onlookers who are wanting to become engaged. It is an effective tool to build brand awareness — touch lives and solve problems.
Promotions — Don't be Waiting Until the Day of the Show to Share that You are Exhibiting at the Show
If you did not send anything to your followers at least four weeks before the show then they don’t have you on their radar. You should ideally send at least 3 communications before the show via your different channels. We recommend you focus on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. However, depending on the nature of your product you may also want to do Pinterest.
Promotions — Do Give Them an Enticing Reason to Visit Your Booth
Make sure that your key message is consistent across all your communications:
Pre-show promotion, industry advertising, event or trade show signage and publications and exhibit signage.
Do you have anything new to share?
Maybe a newer product or service?
Will you be providing demos or training in your booth?
Will there be hands on opportunities with product or face to face opportunities with key company representatives? Whatever your key message, make sure potential attendees know about it.
Promotions — Don't Opt for Wretched Branded 'Giveaways'
Make sure that your branding jives with your giveaway — Is it brand appropriate? Is it attractive?
Think about how long someone will hang on to the promotional piece and consider wear and tear before making your selection. If you have a more formal brand, you would stay formal with your giveaway and messaging. If you have a playful brand or if you are edgy, then show it.
Think about how long someone will hang on to the promotional piece and consider wear and tear before making your selection. If you have a more formal brand, you would stay formal with your giveaway and messaging. If you have a playful brand or if you are edgy, then show it.
Promotions — Do Provide Your Audience with Benefit Reaping Statement
Make their job easier or inform them why they should consider your product or service.
While some large companies may be able to leverage past communications and rely on their brand equity, Coca Cola or Nike for example, in general, most companies should say what they do and their product/service or organization’s benefits. Find captivating ways to capture their attention. The day the iPod launched and Steve Jobs called it “a thousand songs in your pocket.” Wow. That's captivating. He didn’t have to explain any further. We wanted it already!
Focus on the benefits of interest to your largest audience segments. You can’t be all things to all people. Attack the segments of lesser value in a separate exercise.
Promotions — Don't Forget to Send Customized Invitations to Your Best Clients to Visit Your Booth
You may assume that they already know about the show or that whether or not you send an invitation will not make a difference. However, they are more likely to attend and visit you if you send them a personalized invitation. Remember, they are busy and although they may have attended, or not, in the past you want to stay on their list of companies to consider.
Promotions — Do Find out Client and Attendee Demographics & Psychographics
To better select promotional items most relevant to them. Don’t assume that the latest popular gadget – or worse, the cheapest giveaway – should be your giveaway at your next show. Take a moment to look at information about attendees provided by the show or information you have about your clients. Then think about what they would appreciate when making your promotional material selection.
Promotions — Don't Send Out E-mail Promotions with Bad Hyperlinks, Graphics that Does Not Display Correctly, Bad Redirects or High SPAM score
Email promotions with high SPAM scores will go directly to recipient’s SPAM folders or can’t get through their firewall. Work with your e-marketing or IT specialists to make sure your email promotions have the best chance of making it to their intended recipients.
Promotions — Do Train Your Staff About What You are Promoting and Why You are Promoting
Make sure they know the overall objectives of the event. What are your goals, target market, giveaways, who gets what and why?
Set a goal that the value proposition for the product or service be stated in no more that 3 bullet points. Your giveaways should be tied to this value proposition.
Formulate a succinct answer to the competitive differentiation question. Prepare a series of answers, if needed, to address various competitive segments. Again, your competitive differentiation should align seamless with your giveaway. Remember, competition is about perception as much as it is about reality, so make sure you are asking your customers and prospects who they think is competitive and not just relying on whom you know to be in your space.
Review the copy used by your competitors. Make sure yours is clearer, more honest and more memorable.
Train your staff on the speech and the competitive answers. Drill them thoroughly so they can recite the speech with a smooth and natural delivery.